Blue Camellia, Aloe, Absinth
by Unique .F
Summary: Blue Camellia, deep throated pink, Edged by purple-blue, The fire in my heart, The light in my shadow. Aloe, bright vibrant green, But not to touch, Hurt, wounds deep within me, Grief too deep to fade. Absinth, pale yellow and round, Teardrops of a wintry stem, Gone from you I wither, My tormented love never away...
1. The Prose

_**Blue Camellia, Aloe, Absinth**_

_Blue Camellia, deep throated pink,_

_Edged by purple-blue,_

_The fire in my heart,_

_The light in my shadow._

_Aloe, bright vibrant green,_

_But not to touch,_

_Hurt, wounds deep within me,_

_Grief too deep to fade._

_Absinth, pale yellow and round,_

_Teardrops of a wintry stem,_

_Gone from you I wither,_

_My tormented love never away._

_Campion Rose, hot blushing cerise, _

_Spots of kisses, pallid writhing limb,_

_You who scaled the walls of my heart,_

_Forever worthy of my love._

_Caraway, bright shocking white,_

_Tiny flowers, little clusters,_

_Pain in my soul,_

_Why did you betray me?_

_Carolina Jasmine, vivid gold,_

_Deep-throats, star shaped,_

_Always apart,_

_Agonised outcast._

_Centifolia Rose, pale pink,_

_Squashed, round, plump,_

_You're burning me alive,_

_Sending my heart to hell._

_China Pink, rosy coral,_

_Bloody red fading out,_

_I'm broken,_

_Aching deep inside._

_Cudweed, messy weed,_

_Dashes of white,_

_Constantly in my thoughts,_

_How could I ever forget you?_

_Daisy, pure virgin white, blushing,_

_Round orange heart,_

_So youthful, so innocent,_

_Precious child to me._

_Dwarf Sumac, hot fire crimson,_

_Blood against ground,_

_My everlasting love for you,_

_Mystic adoration._

_Fennel, thin and straight,_

_Bright yellow clusters,_

_Standing defiant in the rain,_

_Strong and courageous._

_Forget-Me-Not, gentle purple,_

_Easy to miss,_

_Forever faithful to you,_

_Never forget, eternal affection._

_Gladiola, sweet and beautiful,_

_Our life story,_

_Stubborn, wilful,_

_Ardour of first sight._

_Guelder Rose, fresh white,_

_Smaller in the middle,_

_Cold without your summer,_

_Ancient without your youth._

_Heather, deep fuchsia pink,_

_Tough and hardy,_

_Anything for you,_

_Wishes will all come true._

_Hibiscus, enchanting,_

_Delicate beauty,_

_Rosy-cheeked, red-lipped, dark-haired,_

_My precious thing._

_Imperial Crown, bold and fierce,_

_Hidden beauty, only for sight,_

_You always had the power over me,_

_My Majesty, my queen._

_Jacqueminot Rose, ruby red,_

_Vermillion exquisiteness,_

_I would never lie to you,_

_Deceit blown away._

_Laburnam, dangling gold,_

_Splash against dark green,_

_Forsaken, cast aside, defeated,_

_Eternally unforgiven._

_Marechel Niel Rose, washed-out yellow,_

_Paper-folded, pale,_

_I can never resist you,_

_Completely yours._

_Mezereon, dark lilac,_

_Tall cluster, long branch,_

_Rise to any expectation,_

_Anything to please you._

_Palm, vivid green,_

_Many-fingered leaves arcing proudly out,_

_The cry of conquest,_

_You are victorious._

_Peach blossom, lovely pink-purple,_

_From that same furry fruit,_

_My bride, my queen, my love,_

_How was I never generous with you?_

_Queen Anne's Lace, perfect white,_

_Wealthy white in olive green,_

_So unreal to you,_

_Your forever fantasy addiction._

_Viscaria, round and purple,_

_Waving lightly in the breeze,_

_Like weaving ballroom figures,_

_Why won't you dance with me?_

_White Rosebud, your sweet symbol,_

_Precious, not yet unfurled,_

_Girlhood, unready for love,_

_I'll always wait for you._

**Inspired by the messages conveyed by flowers.**


	2. Blue Camellia

_Blue Camellia_

_Blue Camellia, deep throated pink,_

_Edged by purple-blue,_

_The fire in my heart,_

_The light in my shadow._

I saw her for the very first time on a hot sunny afternoon. Normally I wouldn't be abroad in such a time; I hated the sunlight in the mortal world. It burned my eyes and made my pale skin turn red with painful radiation. I had always been a nocturnal creature. Even my avian form agreed with me.

But I was that day. Maybe through fate or design, or more likely, random chance and possibility that I happened to decide to roost on that particular tree.

It was an oak tree. I liked oak trees. One of my ilk can see the very beginnings, the middles, and the ends of everything. Which can be disorientating, but I learned to live with it. For such I saw the oak seedling and the withered husk, and the proud strong tree in between. Oaks always live the longest. They have the most interesting stories to tell.

I listened to the sigh of his voice on the wind as he greeted me. I inclined my head as I perched, half-closing my eyes to block out the dreaded sunlight. Why did it have to be so shockingly bright?

I heard a girlish giggle, and a human female ran up to my tree and collapsed by its roots. I blinked at her, rather surprised. She was as beautiful as a baby as she was a woman. But what startled me most was that I could not see her end. But I could see the end of everything. The universe, the planets, if I so chose to. Even myself. But not her.

She piqued my interest. And she was beautiful. Just looking at what she would become made me burn. I had never wanted a human like this before. She made my heart burst into flames. The source of my unexpected passion stretched out, and began to sing. I was entranced by her girlish, untutored voice, even as I could hear the siren's call it would become.

I was unable to stop myself. I watched her, constantly, until she at last tired of her singing and ran towards her house, I needed not even a moments consideration to spread my wings and fly after her. Anything to keep the fire alive. I felt as if the fire she had kindled within me would burn out and go cold, and I would die if I tore my gaze from her.

I found a tree outside of her window and continued to watch her. Some part of me that was not truly entranced by a plain, simple human girl told me repeatedly how creepy I must look. But I ignored it, with the careful practice one of my kin cultivates.

I didn't care she was only a chi'. I didn't care, her belief in me and everything mine was so strong it made me want to fly for years on end and never have to rest. So I decided to send her a present. A book, of her very own.

I had no idea it would turn out like this.


	3. Aloe

Aloe

_Aloe, bright vibrant green,_

_But not to touch,_

_Hurt, wounds deep within me,_

_Grief too deep to fade._

It hurt him, every day that passed. She was oblivious to him. She spent her time reading his book or immersed in some other fantasy novel. It made him obscenely jealous whenever her gentle lips were not caressing _his _words, whenever her deep eyes did not sparkle for _his _plot. He ached with the pain of wanting to go to her, knowing he _could, _but knowing if he did, he would destroy his frail, precious thing.

Quickly he was becoming more and more possessive. People in his kingdom openly referred to her as the King's Obsession, it was so bad.

But he could not leave her. For as much as it hurt him to stay, it hurt him even more to go. To not know what she was doing. Who she was speaking to. What she was reading.

He could not help it. He was desperately afraid someone would take her from him. Each passing second was another scar.

Because with each passing second she grew further away from him, older and older, until at last she would wither. And he could not bear to miss a single second of her life as it poured away in her hourglass, as each heartbeat hurried towards oblivion.

He would live forever, but she would die.

The thought blew a hole through his chest. He had thought so much of his woeful predicament he was as riddled through as a Swiss cheese. He loved her, he _wanted _her, but she was so, so cruel.

Why couldn't she acknowledge him? It ached! It hurt.  
Or perhaps he had died. Somehow, in his sleep. And this was the acutely painful, glorious perfect hell.

No, no. She could never be anything but an angel.

But it didn't mean he, the broken, hurting man staring at her with tears in his eyes and wishes in his heart, was one too.


	4. Absinth

Absinth

_Absinth, pale yellow and round,_

_Teardrops of a wintry stem,_

_Gone from you I wither,_

_My tormented love never away._

Maybe I was just masochistic. I knew it hurt me to see her but I relished the pain, because when I left it would be _gone. _Like everything else.

She tortured me, with thoughts of her. I woke crying her name in the midnight, I found my hands and arms covered by self-inflicted punctures from my own nails. I felt so cold, so lonely without her. I craved the fire she could light within me, anything to chase the shadows away. I resorted to following her everywhere, through my crystals or my own shape. I created dreams of me and sent them to her, dreams of _us. _It was these that kept me sane. Watching her, kept me sane.

I felt like one of the waking dead. I felt cold and dead and already gone. I withered, from once strong and proud to weak and impotent. I loathed the fragments and trappings of my old life before her, and looked through the pages and things with a mystification of a man that could never be more dissimilar. I could barely remember a time when I felt the hot, passionate mercurial shades of my temper, nor felt joy so bright or mischievous pleasure so strong that I felt inspired to cry out my feelings in song.

Constant under it all was my tormented need for her. I was obsessed with her. I couldn't hide from it, the craving was just too strong. She was my drug. My painful, destroying, dark drug. I was falling under. I was entranced, entrapped, enchanted. I was _hers, _I wanted to be her slave. I _wanted _her to chain me, tame me, claim me like some rabid dog.

What had happened to me? I tried to run away from it, but I couldn't. I locked myself in the dungeons and had my goblins put chains of iron around my arms to prevent me from watching her. I lasted not even a night before I was screaming, begging, pleading. Underneath it all was my agonized love for her, all-consuming, irresistible.

My kin were very sorrowful with me. They backed away when I approached. They lowered their eyes when I challenged them. Even she who I would have once wed turned away from me. I had loved Elinyara once. I had loved her with a gentle fervour, completely different from the raging passion like a tidal wave. It was unnatural. My kind were not made to love. We were not made to be angry, nor jealous.

But I was! I was. I was. I stared down at the bottles of poison on the racks and wished I had the strength to do it. Wished I had the strength to remove the dark shadow hanging over everyone's lives. But I didn't. Because if I did, then I would never see her again, and that was just too much to bear.


	5. Campion Rose

Campion Rose

_Campion Rose, hot blushing cerise,_

_Spots of kisses, pallid writhing limbs,_

_You who scaled the walls of my heart,_

_Forever worthy of my love._

He contemplated the girl lying before him with a sort of burning equality. Equality in his current state was the heights of emotions as he had been Before. Before he had met her.

He knew more about her now. Knew that she had no friends, but adored her mother, and spent her time immersing herself in fantasy. He liked that about her. It held an odd type of symmetry.

He thought about his reasons and he thought about his emotions. His reason told him to leave the child, she would not give to him what he craved from her, no one could give that. Innocent and yet tarnished. Old and young. Wise and foolish. Strong and weak. Dominating and submissive. But she was close. So very close.

His emotions told him that he longed for the fire that burned in his heart with her presence, the way without even knowing he was there she could make him feel alive again. He felt as if now that his life had been one long grey sleep, and now he was just waking up and discovering the dawn. And what a beautiful dawn.

Her name didn't matter to him, nor did her age, nor her immaturity, inexperience. He had thousands of names. He had thousands of ages. He had millennia of maturaty, experience. He scarcely needed more.

But what drew him even more was that she was different. She was not like the others of her generation. She was not perfect and didn't go on dates. She wasn't popular and she wasn't cool but she didn't give a s**t. She wasn't skinny as a rake and had no interest in boys that weren't fictional. He preened.

Many of his subjects accused him of having a heart of stone. He didn't think so. He had a heart like a labyrinth.

And it seems she had already won his. He toyed with the idea of making her really run his Labyrinth, and shuddered as he thought of her trailing her fingers across his bricks, her feet landing on the ancient, living labyrinth as connected to him as a soul to its body.

_Yes, _he thought suddenly, with a warm, rosy glow, _she is worthy._

He lifted his great wings and took off. He imagined her by his side as his queen. If he had been human, a smile would have touched his lips.

_Not yet, _he thought,

_But soon._


	6. Caraway

Caraway

_Caraway, bright shocking white,_

_Tiny flowers, little clusters,_

_Pain in my soul,_

_Why did you betray me?_

She kisses the boy behind the bike shed. Her friends giggle behind her. He clenches his fists, wishes he could smash the stupid mortal's head into the cool steel of the shed.

His name is Jack.

_Jack. _Take away the C and the K and add RETH and it's his name. He wishes it was he there. He knows it's perverted and he's scared because even now, she's only a girl, and he's far too old for her.

So why does he feel this? But he can see what she will become, a raven-haired beauty with entrancing shimmering eyes and pale skin. A woman who deserves to be his. Needs to be his. And he can see what the stupid boy will become. Brown hair stuck up in the popular style, sad brown eyes, thickly built. He will be a police officer one day.

And he'll die, shot by a fleeing criminal, never having married, but leaving his one kid alone and bereft in the world, until she is wished away by her foster parent to him. Then she will be a goblinmaid.

He feels so hurt, so betrayed. She must know he can see her. She must know he knows about her. She talks to him in her dreams. Tells him about her life. And he will hold her on his lap and stroke her hair and let her cry about her mundane life when she wants to be a princess. He will be her perfect friend, whatever age, whatever look, whatever personality she wants. One day he is her Prince Charming riding on a beautiful white stallion, the next he is a good looking mortal boy taking an interest in her so she can spite the boys at school who teased her.

One day he is her villain, the next, he hopes he will be her king.

He feels the pain and the anguish inside of him as he watches the two behind the bike sheds, just a tiny peck, not really a kiss, but he can see them both when they are adults, and that makes it so much worse, because he knows.

He knows he can't have her, really. It's her destiny to defeat him. Her destiny to destroy him.

He only wishes she won't hurt him.


	7. Carolina Jasmine

Carolina Jasmine

_Carolina Jasmine, vivid gold,_

_Deep-throats, star shaped,_

_Always apart,_

_Agonised outcast._

He feels so lonely watching her. What is she doing? He doesn't understand. Why does she fuss with herself like this? What is the point?

She and her friends are at the spa. They are having themselves tortured by dropping hot stones on their bare backs and jumping into pools of steaming water. But when he, furious, tries to attack those who dared hurt his precious creature she catches his eye and stares at him until he retreats.

Till this day he can still never hold her gaze.

Their mothers smile benignly and do not interfere as the torturers begin to hit the girls, up and down their backs, repeatedly. It must have hurt them, he could hear a girl's cry.

But Sarah only smiles, and smirks at him watching her through the gloom.

She knows he can see her.

And she pushes him away, outcasts him. Lonely, frightened by his feelings and desperately seeking her, the solace, the fire that she conjures within him to burn away his fears and worries. But it is as if there is a huge rift between them, one that he cannot cross.

He doesn't understand it when they stare down in worry and tears at pieces of paper marked with numbers. He doesn't understand it when they cluster together to poison their skin with cream that makes them go as pale as him and slather their nails with glittering rainbows. He doesn't understand it when she boldly steps in front of the rattling metal monsters she calls buses and waves them down blithely.

He doesn't understand her and what he sees frightens him.

Nothing beats her down, she cries and she weeps and she smirks in the darkness and pushes him away. There is nothing he can do, nothing he can say.

All he can do is wait, wait for nighttime and sleep, where she will come to him in her dreams. Then she will wrap her arms around his neck and whisper in his ear, and for a brief, temporary moment, a bridge is built and he understands.

But then she pushes him away again, and he stands on the fringes, a lonely outcast, peering in, trying to understand.


End file.
